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That’s the ethos at Slave Play, one of the most buzzed-about shows on Broadway. The play, which dissects the legacy of slavery in interracial relationships, has drawn legions of famous fans, from Zendaya to Madonna. Many of them are connected directly to firecracker playwright Jeremy O. Harris, who has become a celebrity in his own right, joining the glitterati at the Met Gala and NYFW.

This weekend, however, saw the arrival of someone truly special. Rihanna looms large over Slave Play; as Harris said on Twitter, “Her words are all over it. She’s a 9th character in the play.” And she was in the house.

Or rather, she was on her way. Riri showed up late, but instead of adhering to theater tradition and locking her out, the producers held the curtain until she was seated. She then (gasp!) texted Harris during the show and the playwright (gasp!) texted back.

The events made their way into the tabloids, and have since kicked off a discussion about theater etiquette. Is it rude to use one’s phone? Should celebrities be treated differently than buyers who’ve shelled out $100? What is the “right” way to show support for the work?

For Harris, it’s simple: “The patron saint of the play I wrote is literally a pop star, fashion icon, and Demi-goddess named Rihanna,” he tweeted. “When Dionysus is coming you hold the curtain.” And he doesn’t mind the texting, as he believes “there’s no right or wrong way to watch the theatre.”

The larger conversation, however, both about etiquette and Slave Play itself, revolves around race, and the language (not always coded) intended to either preserve or dismantle various barriers to entry.

Even before he and Riri blew up Broadway tradition this weekend, Harris has been ruffling conservative feathers, the most agitated belonging to New York Post columnist Michael Riedel. Once known for his skewering of Broadway’s sacred cows, he chose to run a factually inaccurate rant about Slave Play’ s box office performance last week.

I won’t link to it here, as I prefer not to signalboost alternative facts. However, sloppy journalism is worth rebutting, especially when it discredits black entrepreneurs and artists.

Among the Post’s inaccuracies were claims that the $3.9m show was struggling to raise money, while it has in fact been capitalized for weeks, with a waiting list of hopeful investors. It also claimed total sales are $800,000 when they’re well above $1 million. And the show has been wrapping $100,000 a day in advance sales since previews began. These are true facts, corroborated by multiple sources on the production team.

Does any of this mean Slave Play is a bona fide hit? No. Its first six performances grossed only half their potential. There’s plenty of slack to pick up over the next 16 weeks. But if it continues to wrap $100,000 a day, it will sail into profit with ease.

Playwright Jeremy O. Harris outside the Golden, where his SLAVE PLAY marks his Broadway debut.

Quil-Lemons

Underlying the Post’s rant is something bigger than Broadway. Poor fact-checking is one thing, but dedicating an entire column to a black playwright’s lack of “appeal” feeds an older, more corrosive narrative.

In this iteration, planting false flags about poor sales foments the idea that black artists “don’t sell.” It’s coded language that delegitimizes new voices in an old business. Uncontested, the result can be a self-fulfilling prophecy: plant the seeds of doubt, cultivate them by disrupting positive word-of-mouth, then say “I told you so” when the venture fizzles.

Other gatekeepers then have the opportunity to hold it up as a cautionary avatar, and thus avoid taking similar risks in the future. It may sound conspiratorial, but it is a well documented phenomenon, especially in the corporate world, enough that researchers gave it its own buzzworthy name: The Glass Cliff.

Slave Play’s onstage story confronts the roots of this psychology: in this case, the desire by white people to step back from uncomfortable racial dynamics, and so remove the very support needed to address them.

Harris, whose precipitous rise is a story of its own, is unsurprisingly critical of the tendency to elevate a chosen few to represent an entire diaspora’s worth of voices.

“The drum I beat the most is that there is no such thing as a singular Black thought leader,” he said in an interview. “I fear that because of the way capitalism works, people will only want to listen to the ones they’ve seen photographed a lot. If you’re actually listening, most of us are saying, ‘Also look over here.’”

It’s as thorny a position as any in the public sphere. While Harris beats the drum for his compatriots of color, he needs to make sure his own star isn’t undermined by the myth of perfection.

“You have to protect your room to grow and your right to fail,” his friend and mentor Branden Jacobs-Jenkins told The New York Times, “despite whether or not you fulfill everyone’s wishes to find the next black Jesus.”

The discussion about the “correct” way to watch theater is another refraction of this narrative. Just because Harris doesn’t handle material, phones, or celebrities like most playwrights might, doesn’t mean he’s wrong. It’s a message for the producers to hone as they target buyers: seeing Slave Play is not like seeing other shows on Broadway. That is intentional. And while it’s exciting to many, it also drives some of the old guard up a wall.

Which isn’t to say they’re all up there - a number of Slave Play’s above the title producers are card-carrying Boomers. And the younger ones are well aware of the tightrope they’re walking.

“Every decision is a conversation,” says lead producer Greg Nobile, who is white and 27 years old. “We’re having this success because we are pushing outside the norm. If we try to go down the middle of the road, it’s going to be all wrong.”

The risks and rewards are economic, but they influence more abstract currency, too, like reputations. Mr. Riedel was once dubbed Broadway’s enfant terrible after years of gleefully wrecking the reputations of industry icons, and threatening millions of dollars worth of investments in their projects. Meanwhile, a young black playwright is branded with the same nefarious title after holding the curtain for the woman who inspired his Broadway debut, and sending her a text.